Place · Adivasi hill valley · India
Araku Valley
The mountain valley in the Eastern Ghats of Alluri Sitarama Raju district, Andhra Pradesh, at 1,300m altitude, 110 kilometres from Visakhapatnam — the cultural landscape of about 19 indigenous (Adivasi) communities, chiefly the Konda Dora, Bagata, Kotia and Khond tribes. The valley became famous for its coffee plantations under 1960s Andhra Pradesh government cooperatives (Araku Valley Coffee), now a GI-tagged variety of shade-grown Arabica. The 1922-24 Rampa Rebellion led by Alluri Sitarama Raju (1897-1924) against British forest laws was based in these hills — Sitarama Raju was killed in action at Krishnadevipeta on 7 May 1924. The 2001 Andhra Pradesh government Araku Valley Development Agency and the 2017 Prasad Project for tribal welfare have made Araku a model region.
- Function
- Religious institution & practice
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 18.330, 82.880
Connections (1)
- Route adjacencyPaderu
Araku and Paderu are the two centres of the Visakhapatnam agency tracts, the hill country where the Rampa risings of 1879 and 1922 were fought over forest reservation and the podu ban, and where the Srikakulam movement began in the 1960s. The same hills, the same grievance about land and forest, three risings in ninety years.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Araku Valley”. Archaeological Survey of India and State Archaeology monument records, and the standard regional literature.
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